Barack Obama has never been particularly shy about his hope to reshape the
political landscape of a country deeply divided between red and blue. To
much fanfare earlier this year, his campaign launched into general-election
mode pledging to make a serious play in all 50 states. The idea was scoffed
at by Republicans as a waste of time and money, and lauded by many Democrats
as at least a shrewd way to tie up the GOP's resources. But until recently,
even as some anxious Democrats started to view the 50-state strategy as an
indulgence their candidate could no longer afford, Obama seemed to be
following through  even now he has a few paid staffers in Salt Lake
City, despite the fact that Utah is the reddest of Republican states. His
advisers argue that the approach not only expands the playing field and aids
down-ballot candidates, but that it also helps with fund-raising and adds to volunteer efforts in neighboring states that are more in play  such as, in the
case of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada.

But now, as voter
registration is expected to wind down in the next two weeks and the impact of John
McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, becomes clearer, the Obama campaign is
apparently scaling back its outsized electoral ambitions. It has already
shifted staff, abandoning some states and putting others on notice. If
it once technically played in all 50, it's now down to 48  you can
cross Alaska and North Dakota off the list  and two other states, Montana
and Georgia, are on life support.
The choice of Palin not only crushed Obama's hope of winning the Frontier
State  his campaign has withdrawn most of its staff and ceased advertising
there  but it also caused repercussions in North Dakota, another hockey-crazed
northern state where snow-mobile racing and moose burgers apparently
resonate. The Obama campaign announced this week that it is redeploying
its North Dakota staff  estimated in some press reports to be more than 50 people.

"We always knew it would be an uphill battle, but because people across the
country in red states and blue states are hungry for change, we built a
grass-roots movement we are proud of and an infrastructure that will help
candidates up and down the ballot," says Obama spokeswoman Amy Brundage
of the decision to pull out. The news isn't entirely a surprise, as Obama
cut advertising in North Dakota by 50% in recent weeks. The move comes
as Obama has been forced to mount more serious defenses of Michigan,
Minnesota and Wisconsin  states where the campaign spent nearly $1.5 million in
television advertisements last week.

Another state in which Palin's down-home, conservative appeal may be having
an effect is Montana, where Obama also recently decreased his
advertising budget by 50%. Although Obama approached  and in a few polls, even
led  McCain in surveys of North Dakota and Montana over the summer, when Obama was the
only candidate advertising there, he now trails McCain by double digits in those states.
Real Clear Politics, a nonpartisan website that
tracks the campaign, recently moved both states into the "solid McCain"
column. Still, the campaign is taking a wait-and-see approach in Montana as
staff and volunteers race to register as many voters as possible.
Essentially, the campaign's entire state-by-state strategy will come down to
voter registration: it will keep investing in the states where it can sign
up enough new Democrats to make the race competitive and will likely
abandon those where it can't.

"At the end of the day, some states are going to matter more than others,"
says Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. "If our
registration efforts go very well in Georgia, Georgia will be in play. If
they don't go well, they won't be in play. The map is getting bigger for us,
not smaller."

Georgia is another state in which the campaign once had very high hopes but is
now unsure whether it should continue to invest in it. The campaign stopped advertising
there before the conventions and last week redeployed some of its 75 staff
to neighboring North Carolina  a southern state with a large
African-American electorate that has seen one of the highest levels of voter
registration this cycle, with more than 400,000 new voters on the rolls. If
the campaign can register enough new voters in the Peach State  and it
has already registered more than 300,000 in Georgia  then it believes that
the state could still be in play, since former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr's
libertarian candidacy could steal some of the Republican vote. Bill Clinton
won Georgia in 1992 after Ross Perot drew a significant number of votes from
George H.W. Bush. But for Obama to pull off a similar coup, he would need
an increase in Democratic voters of at least 15% from 2004  a whopping number that, even with an unprecedented 30 offices in the state,
will be difficult to achieve.

"It is interesting to note that the Obama campaign is starting to pull down some
of their efforts to extend the map, as they like to put it, into states that
otherwise wouldn't be in play in an election cycle like this," McCain's
campaign manager Rick Davis said Monday. "We assume, without fanfare, that
he has pulled out of Alaska, where he spent a good deal of media money over
the course of the summer. And [I] look forward to him continuing to spend
his money in states that we hold significant leads."

Although his enormous fund-raising still gives Obama more routes to the White
House than McCain, the contracting playing field does narrow the Democrat's
potential paths to the presidency. Now that a northern front  including
Alaska, Montana and North Dakota  looks out of reach, Obama has four central
ways to win it all:

 Hold the states John Kerry won in 2004 (which are in the Northeast, upper Midwest and
West Coast), plus Ohio, where Obama has invested in more than 70 offices, or
Florida, where his campaign recently pledged to spend almost $40 million
over the remaining six weeks.

 Have a strong showing in the Mountain West, winning Colorado, Nevada and
New Mexico.

"You had Obama spend the better part of the summer trying to make this race
into a 20- [to] 25-state battleground, but he's reined this in a little bit to 11
or 12 states, and potentially less, closer to Election Day," says Evan Tracey,
president of TNS's Media Intelligence Campaign Media Analysis Group, which
tracks campaign advertising. "It's all about Ohio, and after that, the other
areas are a hedge."